Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

able to carry. It’s like getting another ranch for free.” Not totally free, he admits. “We had to do a little work to get there.” But the effect of changing his grazing management made all the difference. “I realized that the reason my produc tivity was increasing so much on my ranch was because I was building soil organic matter. I was putting life back into the soil.” He was not just putting organic mat ter back in the soil, he was sequestering carbon. That’s important because car bon is essential in the process of con verting soil nutrients into plant-avail able nutrients as well as being an

me. He’s talking about weight gain that I’m not even coming close to.” So the Elzingas started doing the regenerative grazing practices Gerrish suggested. “And basically, he set us on our path to a marbled steak,” he remembers. “And I didn’t really know how powerful that was going to be until two things started to happen. One, I was able to start feeding my cattle more by increasing the amount of forage. And two, I was able to increase the amount of cattle on the ranch,” he says. “And if I calculate the yield on my grass on this ranch over that time, I’ve doubled the amount of cattle I’m

important plant nutrient itself. “And all of a sudden I realized, ‘holy cow! This is how we capture carbon.’ And that’s when the whole carbon thing hit.” It’s a win-win. Moving atmospheric carbon into the soil cleans the atmo sphere. Healthy soil equals healthy plants, which equals cattle that can better meet their genetic potential on grass. “It’s because the grass finally got enough energy in it that it became like grain in finishing cattle. And the reason the grass got the energy is because we converted our soil from a dead soil to a living soil.” And it’s all because he wanted a

Alderspring Ranch near May, Idaho utilizes cow camps on their summer range — range riders choose where the cattle graze by day and stay close to protect them from wolf predation at night.

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